Canton woman brings 100 years of artistic joy

Thursday

Jul 6, 2017 at 6:17 PMJul 6, 2017 at 6:17 PM

By Michelle C.D. George

Everyone likes having an ice cream sundae on a warm summer’s day. Constance Lawson recently had that pleasure as she celebrated her 100th birthday at Tower Hill, a health and rehabilitation center in Canton.

Lawson enjoyed her sundae while listening to the staff and residents sing her, "Happy birthday." She also received a letter from Governor Charlie Baker with well wishes for her birthday, and expects to receive a letter soon from the White House congratulating her on becoming a centenarian.

Lawson, was born Constance Hudler June 2, 1917, in Battle Creek, Michigan. This period during World War I and the subsequent Great Depression was a particularly tough time for her. After her parents divorced, a teenage Lawson and her mother moved to a one-bedroom apartment in Detroit, while her two brothers stayed with their father in Battle Creek. She and her mother tried their best to make ends meet. Sometimes the two went without heat in the winter months, with Lawson’s mother huddled in bed, and Lawson sleeping on the sofa huddled in an overcoat for warmth.

Lawson discovered she had a love for art and worked as a fashion illustrator for the Detroit Free Press. She further pursued her craft by studying at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, where she met her husband, Gordon Lawson, in the late 1940s.

The couple moved around a bit but eventually settled down in Lexington in the late 1950s, where Gordon worked as a technical writer, and Connie as a fashion illustrator at Stern’s, a department store in Boston.

Lawson loved art so much that she taught classes to their neighbors in the basement of their Lexington home. In her weekly classes, she taught them how to mix paint, draw, and how to make a composition. In addition to her love for art, Lawson also had a knack as a seamstress, and created her own clothes, pillowcases, and stationary. Jean Hatfield, Lawson’s neighbor of 20 years, recalls a silk emerald green scarf that Lawson once made for her with her initials embroidered on it.

“Connie would make beautiful things for me. They were just lovely,” Hatfield noted. “Everything she did had an artistic touch to it. She was a very dedicated artist.”

The Lawsons, along with Hatfield and her husband, became close, with both couples' children playing together at either household, and the families getting dressed up and enjoying elaborate dinner parties at the Hatfields' home. According to Hatfield, it was almost as if the families had merged.

Lawson’s artistic flair was passed on to her only child, Susan, who attended the Rhode Island School of Design and went on to become an architect, according to John Mader, Susan’s widow. The couple eventually moved to Tokyo, where much of Susan’s artwork was on display at various museums. They were married for 19 years before Susan lost her battle with breast cancer. Even though Mader resides in Hong Kong, he makes it a point to visit Lawson at Tower Hill, as well as pay a visit to Susan’s grave every year.

Well into her retirement, Lawson created many pieces of art, including oil paintings, collages, and drawings of which Hatfield and Mader have some prize pieces in their respective collections. Her attraction to vibrant colors led her to create many paintings of flowers, her love for them so much that even when Lawson wrote a letter, she would draw a small bunch of flowers at the bottom.

After 33 years of marriage, Lawson and her husband parted ways. Lawson transitioned from a variety of apartment buildings into assisted living facilities, before becoming a resident at Tower Hill in 2009. She lights up whenever any of the staff or residents call her name. She enjoys listening to all types of music, and often falls asleep to it, according to Julie Levesque, director of activities at Tower Hill for the past 18 years. After decades of creating artwork, Lawson also enjoys a good hand massage from the staff.

“I love being around the residents,” Levesque said. “I love making them laugh, seeing them happy, and seeing them turn 100.”